Are advances in technology making speakers better?

@jumia wrote:

How much more effort is required too perfect a speaker? my speaker is several years old and all the gear and the speaker are all broken in. And now I'm being told to upgrade.

You're not being told what to do, if anything you're letting someone tell you what they would like you to do. Don't let their business (incl. marketing crap) dictate your choice, instead make it the other way 'round and/or cut loose of it all and use what's available (from past/present, 2nd hand/new, DIY/preassembled, pro/domestic, etc.) to make your own preferred sonic meal - so-called advances in technology, peer pressure, dogma and paradigm be damned. 

It's about physics, implementation and quality/type of design. The first two are about scaling and the effort you/they out into getting the different pieces/parameters to intermingle properly, and the latter have been around for decades in a variety of shapes with nothing essentially new under the sun.

Mostly what it's about is no different now than it was many years ago. There have been important advances in digital tools, and class D amplifiers make for more compact active speakers (with the aid of digital tools) with potentially tons of wattages. Indeed, DSP tooling is a great asset with active speakers, and they needn't be small nor bundled solutions. 

At the core of things though what's out there is generally streamlined business ventures meant to make money from a package too small and wrapped in different yet stereotypical looking clothing to distinguish themselves and have excuses for design "upgrades." Any advances that are are not least about making something smaller with the least negative impact, but with speakers there's ultimately no escaping physics. 

My guess: if you were to hear and realize what even fairly priced, and perhaps in particular older, properly sized high efficiency speakers could do, you'd step off the merry-go-round of the "small, new and expensive" speaker category that seeks of you to make progressively deeper digs in your pockets and invest in their going-in-circles business hierarchy. Once the basics are right it's really about the implementation, and suddenly much if not most of the fancy new stuff just becomes irrelevant. 

@mbmi wrote:

One thing no one ever mentions when talking about speakers....Speakers have voice coils and they take up to 30 minutes to heat up and expand. THAT’S when you’ll hear the optimal sound from that speaker...not until. People will run their electronics to warm them up but always when doing so......run the signal at low volume thru your speakers....after 20 - 30 minutes , then do your serious listening. This is according to Steve Deckert. And he’s Right. The sound clanges pretty dramatically after about 20 min. Try It.

I've gone over this phenomenon at quite a few junctures here, so glad to see you bringing this up. Personally I find it takes elevated volume levels for about an hour or more to bring about the proper heat-up effect of the voice coils to have the speakers open up and loosen more fully, but being my main speakers + subs are high efficiency with bigger voice coils it might explain why this process takes a bit longer and requires more volume. In any case it's an important aspect of system warm-up to be aware of apart from thinking of electronics alone. 

@larryi --

+1

Advance in tech only gets you so far when the overall package of a speaker is diminished in size; it’s the one thing we can’t miniaturize without severe sonic implications. Like on the driver side: a several thousand $$ 1" dome tweeter is still a 1" dome tweeter, the same with an expensive 6 1/2" woofer, etc. I’ve read Mr. Atkinson’s and others from Stereophile’s praise of Edgar Villchur’s AR-1 speakers and what it initiated, and while we see the ramifications of the acoustic suspension design of his flourishing in its basics to this day - the success of which they’re so eager to bow to - one shouldn’t equate smaller speakers with their being the better sounding alternative, as much at least as their widespread domestic success while fitting the narrative of an "audiophile" magazine’s paradigm or dogma even that has more or less banished large, high efficiency speakers decades ago.

The very high efficiency, and thereby all-horn systems of yore weren't really intended for a domestic environment - the likes of cinema speakers from RCA, Altec, Western Electric, Klangfilm and Vitavox - but they arguably were and still are among, if not the very best expressions of true (i.e.: all-)horn speakers around, while sounding great in a home environment if one wills their inclusion here. They were also very big (apart from being brilliant, sturdy designs), which is a vital aspect and accommodation for horns to be their best. Once domesticated into smaller and less dedicated iterations from Klipsch and others, horn-hybrids among them, problems arose. Since then technology has certainly assisted in making what are essentially horn designs too small into sounding somewhat better, which seems to be a particular trademark in the use of technology today: making something smaller sound better - as such. Still, take a much older horn design properly sized, even with (or likely because of) the drivers of the day, and it'll run circles around their smaller, modern brethren. A tweeter assisted (like with a JBL 2405) Vitavox Thunderbolt system (and they aren't the biggest horn speaker systems around), not least actively configured, simply mauls any modern direct radiating and popular, even expensive typically horn-hybrid speakers from JBL and others into the ground with its fleshed-out presence, tonality, dynamics, resolution, scale, etc. Truly, it's no comparison. Maybe one doesn't fancy such "a sound" because they've never heard live-like dynamics and insight this fully formed (and compared to the habitual exposition of the "molasses" imprinting of typical low eff. speakers, one understands the shock that may follow here), fair enough, but don't tell me it's a dated, shrill sound that comes from a place of nostalgia. If anything modern speakers by comparison sound overly processed/filtered, dull, malnourished and quenched of life, and they're the ones out of place in a time when we should at least have recognized the importance of adhering to size and high efficiency with a design that brings music to the fore relatively uninhibited. 

Thank you, @larryi.

@mijostyn wrote:

magnificent? Hardly. They were awful and they still are awful.

I guess the following says it all:

If you want to wax poetic over an antique speaker try the KLH Model 3. Not great either, but a lot more listenable. 

I rest my case. 

@mijostyn wrote:

The big theater systems were never intended for home use and in home environments they SHOUTED at you.

Be specific, which of them in particular are you referring to? My own EV pro cinema speakers are placed ~11ft. from the listening position, and they don’t in the least shout at me. If anything going with the bigger, large format MF/HF horn from a smaller ditto made them even more relaxed sounding, and yet fuller and more visceral. Additionally I’ve heard big JBL and Vitavox theater systems, among others, in domestic settings that weren’t at all shouty, as you put it, but I guess to some presence of presentation (as opposed to placid ’laid-back’) equates into "shouty." No, big theater systems weren’t intended for home use, but that’s not necessarily to say they can’t be successfully integrated in a home environment.

Certainly, they grabbed your attention. It is the speaker that does not grab your attention that requires more listening.

I’ve heard enough speakers through the years to know exactly when they have my attention for the very right reasons. Implying that people who like big theater segment speakers are just in for a fun, empty calorie, adolescent thrill ride is, how should one put it, a less informed stance.

Interestingly, with modern digital signal processing it might be possible to make some of those old EVs and Altecs sound passible. Did he mention digital? Shoot the bastard!

No extra processing needed for my actively configured EV’s via the DSP, other than basic filter values, gain structure, a few HF-notches and a peak suppression. Delay settings are vital, obviously.

Most who’re into high efficiency speakers, not least of the vintage kind, seem to dig passively configured setups with low wattage tube amps, oftentimes with an analogue source. Myself I use a digital source exclusively (HDD-based, no less), active config. via DSP and a differentiated SS amp approach with lower wattage class A (30W), class A/B (>1kW) and class TD (>1kW). Not least I use high eff. subs, which seem to be a rarity here.

@holmz wrote:

@mijostyn I am assuming that you do not abide legacy speakers from a 1/2 century back as being within the spirit of the thread with “Advances in technology” in the title?

To some the question mark in the thread title is less of a factor..

@mijostyn wrote:

the technology was the same a century ago but speakers had different requirements. Given the state of amplifier development, efficiency was a very important issue if you wanted to fill a whole theater with sound. Now we have CAD tech to help us design loudspeakers. Back then it was slide rules.

CAD tech only gets you so far. What’s its use when applying it to a frame generally too puny and inefficient, other than potentially making smaller speakers better? You would have to appreciate the difference large size and high efficiency offers, other than from a panel speaker (sans high efficiency), but leaving the importance of it to a bygone ear and different segment of use only falls back on you wanting to make general what you fail to savor nor understand. And btw the best designers back then knew how to make more use with a "slide rule" than most do with CAD design today. Combine the two, another matter.

I appreciate old loudspeakers for what they are, speakers designed with different priorities. As a group they tend to be very efficient and very colored which phusis obviously likes.

Coloration, it could be argued, is many things also by "virtue" of absence: lack of image size and dynamics, scale, ease, physicality, presence, etc. - traits where most modern speakers fall short. You don’t hear it as coloration per se, but when you know the difference it makes you also realize how much less alive, visceral, real and emotional the experience gets. I’d be glad trade in a bit of coloration in what’s typically expected of it to be (and that’s assuming it’s even there) with mentioned traits, but obviously you don’t know and don’t care to know what I may or may not be missing out on, nor what I gain with your staunch generalizations and assumptions.

Coloration in the older speakers interferes with the generation of a decent image. phusis will now tell you that his speakers image fine. They do not because they can’t. It is like asking a bus to fly. Buses and airplanes are transportation but have vastly different capabilities.

Oh, but they do, and again: you wouldn’t know. And your analogy is about as meaningless as can be. An actually relevant one would be that of referring to the Apollo space program. Back then in the 60’s (and early 70’s) they went to the moon with the computational power available to them at the time. Could they have revisited the moon in the meantime with more modern tech? Sure, if they wanted to, but they didn’t - and that’s the point. Oh well, what’s the use of speaking to a door, a closed one no less.

Yes, I have listened to a bunch of ancient loudspeakers from Altec, EV and JBL. I like the old Bozaks the best:-)

Says one individual.

@mijostyn wrote:

@Phusis, if you think those speakers image you have never heard the image of a current state of the art system. Experience is the best teacher. Next, what do you know about CAD when it comes to speakers? Do you actually design speakers?

No, I don’t design speakers nor know of the specifics of CAD in their more modern development, but I don’t believe I have to either; my primary concern is to assess the final product, and it also leaves me unaffected of what theory might dictate apart from acknowledging the importance physics, so yes: experience as it relates to perceived sonics, and what’s deduced from this, is the best teacher.

I was going to include (but didn’t get to within the 30 min. deadline for edits) that what I regard as fine imaging mayn’t be up to your standards, but that’s not in my mind to say the EV’s can’t image. If on the other hand yours is a more binary approach where anything other than state of the art imaging equates into no imaging, then I guess the EV’s (and most other speakers, incl. the more modern ones) can’t image.

Back in the 60’s speaker designers and builders could never afford the computers used in Apollo mission. They cost in the millions. There were no PCs and no CAD programs for speaker design. All they did back them was shove any efficient drivers they could come up in and a box they would fit in with a simple crossover and paint them black.

Relative to the expense of speaker development back from the late 20’s on up, less could do. My point is that brilliant people willed the development of excellent designs from a century ago that didn’t see restrictions imposed with regard to size, but rather what was needed of them to fulfill their intended (cinema) use with limited amp power. Replicas of the WE12a’s for example, build with care in hardwoods and with modern Lamar drivers, are regarded as being among the very best sounding speakers around, aided of course by complementary driver/horn sections around their frequency span.

The most thoughtful designer back then was Paul Klipsch and he even made several mistakes in design that would not be made today by state of the art builders. I remember hearing a home JBL system with that slotted horn they used and it was pretty impressive. I was 16 years old. Whatever, not one of those old speakers could remotely compete with modern speakers.

PWK’s self-imposed limitation was that of working with both a size and budget restriction to accommodate domestic consumers, and initially at least working only with all-horn designs this didn’t come unpunished. Even the K-horns are size limited to a fault, whereas the Jubilee’s come closer to being a more true expression of what an all-horn design is capable of. Indeed, even the latest iteration of the K-horns sound "restricted" and more like speakers next to my actively configured and TH subs-augmented EV’s with large format MF/HF horns on top. That’s why I’d always choose a large format pro cinema system, despite being of much older date and situated in a home setting, where the horn sections are more properly sized (the designers themselves would state "just barely"), because to my ears they just sound more uninhibited and real - age of design be damned. Experience, experience - and priorities..

[...]

I always try to find live recordings from a concert series I attended and have my favorites to use making that analysis for myself. An example would be Cecile McLorin Salvant’s Dreams and Daggers. The sonics are very close to What I heard at the Blue Note in NYC as far as my hearing memory can determine. Great live recording. An accurate system has to be able to match the energy and size of a live performance. It is the rare system that can do that.

Regarding accuracy of reproduction I can relate in particular to "energy and size" as vital parameters here, which is also what I strive to achieve in my setup. It might seem paradoxical, but bigger speakers can sound much less like speakers being that the music emanates into the listening space more uninhibitedly and properly sized; the mind is more effectively tricked into believing what’s presented to it is "real" and/or less a reproduction.

As a rule this can not be done without subwoofers. Subwoofer drivers did not exist in the 60s. They came along in the late 70’s and the drivers did not really reach maturity until the 2000’s. Unfortunately, in many systems subwoofers do more damage than good. I wrestled with them for two decades before getting them to perform at the level were they caused no interference with the midrange and handled the bass up to 100 Hz. This is why the manufacturers of many subs tell you to set the sub to 40 Hz. Down there all they are usually pumping out are record warps. With just a low pass filter they are doing nothing to help clean up the main speakers.

High-passing the mains not too low, and high enough for it to have proper impact/effect, is paramount when trying to integrate subs properly. I fully agree and certainly wouldn’t be without this way of configuring the overall speaker system.

@cd318 --

Great post.